Archive for October, 2009

Recap for the newbies: I am a family practice doctor and I have the opportunity to do a lot of medical surveys and market research programs, mostly online but occasionally in person (focus groups and such). Each month, I post the total I've earned from surveys for that month.

As I've posted in recent months, I tend to get in slumps where I pass up a lot of the survey opportunities that come my way. A couple of months ago, I got back on track and focused on doing as many of them as I could. That turned out well with my income turning around from $171 in August to $428 in September. I figure if I can consistently bring in $400 or more, that's an extra $5,000 a year in income, enough to pay for a couple of weeks vacation for my family.

Well, October turned out to be a gold mine for me. I received payments for 17 surveys plus got to do 2 in-person programs. I collected a grand total of almost a grand - $986.00! Of course, I am quite happy with that. If that doesn't motivate me to keep doing the surveys, I don't know what will.

As you know, I do a lot of online medical surveys (I'm a physician) and earn a good amount of money doing so. One thing I've also done periodically in the past is participate in survey and market research programs in person. There are 3 or 4 companies in my area that do this. I used to do them more often and stopped simply because I've been busy in the office and haven't had the time or energy (they are often in the evening and after a full day of work, the last thing I want to do is sit in some conference room for 2 hours answering questions).

Anyway, I got a couple of invitations recently and decided that with the upcoming medical bills (see my previous post - my wife is having surgery shortly), perhaps I should go do a few of these programs. They are reasonably easy and enjoyable and pay very well.

As it worked out, I was able to schedule 2 of them for this coming Thursday - one at 3:30pm and one at 7:30pm. The first pays $130 and the second pays $225, so in one day, I'll pick up an extra $355 in a matter of about 2 hours. Both places are located about 15 minutes from home in office buildings so travel and parking aren't an issue. I have a feeling I'll be paying more attention to those invites from now on.

My wife has been having some gynecological issues which her doctor has been trying to correct with medication without success. So she is going in on Tuesday for a D&C/Hysteroscopy. Once that is done, they will be scheduling her for a total hysterectomy in the near future.

Obviously, my first concern is that she get better soon as she really has been miserable lately, but there will be a significant financial impact to her surgery, too. We have insurance but there is a deductible and co-insurance to deal with. Her gallbladder surgery a few years back cost us about $3,000 as I recall. I suspect this ordeal will run more than that between the 2 procedures. I'm guessing about $5,000. She is supposed to get a discount of some sort because she works for the hospital but I don't know what that will amount to.

Then there are lost wages. I'll probably lose about $1,500 in income from taking off. She will probably lose another $1,000-$1,500 depending on how long she has to be out of work.

So all together, we're probably looking at about $8,000 in unexpected costs. We have the money, fortunately, but it is still a lot, not that you can put a price on your health.

I am a physician and have the opportunity to do many online (and occasional in-person) surveys and market research programs. They can be fairly quick and easy or they can be quite long, boring and tedious, but in either case, they pay quite well, on the order of $100/hour or more sometimes. Here in my blog, I report the income I received during the month from doing surveys. It is not the amount generated during the month as there is a lag of several weeks between survey and payment.

For the month of September, I collected $428. I'm quite pleased with that. If you have been following my blog, you'll know that the past few months I had been slacking off and not doing all the surveys I got offered. No reason. Just laziness. So in August I only made $171. In July, I made $160. September was my best month since June (actually $2 more than June). I'm planning to stay on track doing what comes my way and keep the monthly total up over the $400 mark.